[General Battuta]

Where's my flying DeLorean and Mattel hoverboard dammit?!?!

Re: the options for moderated project members, I guess what I'm left wondering is just how much a team member being unable to post for a day or two impacts mod progress in an era when it seems like just about every active mod has its own IRC channel and SVN and probably one or two other official means of extraforum team communication.  And I'm not trying to cast doubts on anyone: if you say to me "yeah even with all of those other options this is a major issue," then I fully agree that we should implement alternate policies.

BP has probably the most active IRC presence of any HLP project but we still absolutely need a forum to get things down in permanent form. Not all team members are going to be online all the time and I can't even remember what I'm doing long enough to keep it straight through an alt-tab.

[Goober5000]

Posting beta test results is not offline.

I said warned members can still PM people (and you even quoted me saying that).  Is there something wrong with a beta tester sending his reports by PM - to multiple people if necessary - instead of forum post?

And really, the fact that a warned member can't post on HLP ought to give him more free time for beta testing...

[General Battuta]

Yep. PMs, even to multiple people, are not in the same threaded discussion as other beta information - they're functionally segregated. A user has to reply to posts via PM, moving his replies away from what they're replying to. This creates losses on task switching, which cognition is really bad at. It ****s up workflow and makes it harder for 'producers' inasmuch as anyone has them here to track information visibly.

[Goober5000]

That is patently ridiculous.  In the first place, if you are so fastidious about your workflow that you're worried about task switching, then you should be collaborating on Slack or something, not HLP.  You could choose an environment suited to your needs and exercise full control over it.

In the second place, you can avoid the entire problem by simply copying the PM into the thread.  Boom, now you've got all your discussion in one place, same as before.

[General Battuta]

It's patently how we work best! HLP is a modding website, and its purpose is to be the best place to collaborate on FreeSpace mods. If it can't do that as well as some other service, it needs to step up!

It sounds like this issue's been handled - thanks for looking into it, Kara.

[Phantom Hoover]

That is patently ridiculous.  In the first place, if you are so fastidious about your workflow that you're worried about task switching, then you should be collaborating on Slack or something, not HLP.  You could choose an environment suited to your needs and exercise full control over it.

In the second place, you can avoid the entire problem by simply copying the PM into the thread.  Boom, now you've got all your discussion in one place, same as before.

You, the administrator of a forum created as a resource for modders, are currently trying to convince a modder that he has no reason to use this forum for mod development because it isn't a useful resource for modders.

[Goober5000]

You, the administrator of a forum created as a resource for modders, are currently trying to convince a modder that he has no reason to use this forum for mod development because it isn't a useful resource for modders.

No, that's not at all what I'm doing.

[Spoon]

Sure looks like it from where I'm standing.
If you are not doing that, then what? Are you just arguing with Battuta for the sake of arguing with Battuta? Cause if that is what you are doing, then I can only inform you that you are being destroyed in this argument.

[General Battuta]

When I was at Bungle they actually insisted on multi-monitor setups just so people wouldn't have to waste time on swapping between windows, because taking information out of visual awareness was such a blow to moment-by-moment focus. I have no idea if it actually worked on a statistical level but it was good for me!

[General Battuta]

But that is just a factoid, this thread has gotten its job done and I don't think we need to dogpile on anybody